


Tombmates

by MadMags



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadMags/pseuds/MadMags
Summary: AU Vampire verse based off a terrible joke from Tumblr on the pun "tombmates" for an AU where two vampires have to share a coffin.Unbetaed, unproofread, written half on my phone.





	Tombmates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madrabbitgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madrabbitgirl/gifts).



“I’m being what?!” Sherlock sniped, rolling off the cement block in the holding cell. 

 

“You’re being assigned a Guardian, Sherlock,” Detective Inspector Lestrade sighed, rubbing at his grey stubble.

 

The lycanthrope was one of the few outside of the vampire community who would willingly deal with the consulting detective. At least, he’d been one of the few who would until Sherlock’s self destructive streak would rear its ugly head, and he’d disappear down the drain of addiction.

 

“I have a Guardian. Mycroft. Call Mycroft. You can’t keep me here!”   
  
He slammed his hands to the clear plexiglass with drilled holes.   
  
_ Here _ was the vampire holding cell in the belly of New Scotland Yard. Vampires were known in these modern days. They were both and neither the dark demons of the night and romanticized blood sucking creatures. They were people, same as humans. Their abilities and their diets were just a little bit different. 

 

They were more sensitive to sunlight, preferring extreme Northern or Southern locales or places, like London or Seattle, where the forecast often called for rain or overcast days. Not to say you couldn’t find a vampire in Miami or Jamaica, because they, too, lived just about everywhere and anywhere humans did now.

 

Supplements had removed the need for free feeding. Self-governing and exposure to the world at large had led to laws and regulation. Sires relations were no longer the mystical connection of days past. The man who had turned Sherlock Holmes was no great and important being in his life, just a corpse who wasn’t quite a corpse who’d become extremely hungry.

 

Which led to the world’s only consulting detective becoming the world’s only consulting detective  _ vampire _ . It had been about forty years since then. Lestrade had still been brunet. The Agency had stepped in, preventing a cyclical reaction, placing Sherlock with Mycroft Holmes, an ancestor. 

 

“I don’t  _ need _ -”

 

“You do, actually,” Lestrade interrupted. “You’re not to be released until your new Guardian comes to collect.”

 

Sherlock growled.   
  
Mycroft had been an adequate Guardian, mostly remaining hands off, just the way Sherlock preferred. Sure, he’d lost his flat on Montague Street, had bitten a junkie, and was found naked in an electronics store, shouting deductions about the patrons and waxing poetic about bees, but really! If only he’d been able to work!   
  
“They’re expected any time. Drink your supplement, Holmes.”

 

The dark red bottle had been placed inside the cell. He sneered at the bio-junk. A good percentage of supplements were human derived, but with added chemicals and vitamins to sure healthy, happy and complacent vampires.

 

He sulked, letting the cool cement of the room pull the heat from him. Outside, the sun was still barely above the horizon. Again, there was no exploding or bursting into flames, but most vampire can feel the way the suns rays warmed the earth, bright and painful, overloading their senses.    
  
It was possible to die of sun poisoning, but technically humans can die of that too.

 

“Hollywood,” Sherlock bemoaned.   
  
“Sorry?”   
  
Outside the cell door stood a man of timeless facade. He wasn’t particularly tall, but not freakishly short. He had hair that was blonde and brown. His jacket was military-ish, old-fashioned but timelessly so. His shoulders stood straight with good posture. Except… a metal cane was held in his hand.

 

“So you’re the Guardian,” Sherlock replied, blinking firmly to reality. He must have been standing where Lestrade had left him for some time. His muscles burned slightly. A military man, a vampire. The deductions Sherlock could make were contradicting one another, so instead of blundering ahead like he might have…

 

“Shall we go home?” he asked brightly.

 

*** 

 

_ Home _ was an upstairs flat in Central London, owned by a small human woman called Mrs. Hudson.

 

“We’ve all sorts around here,” she’d cooed at him, inviting him in. 

 

Not that Sherlock needed it. Again, Hollywood lies.

 

“Mrs. Turner next door’s got a couple of - what are they, dear?” Mrs. Hudson asked John.

He cleared his throat, removing his jacket.   
  


“Lamia, Mrs. Hudson.”

 

“Right, of course,” she tutted, fluttering around the clean room. “Now there’s some fresh bottles that were delivered by some very pushy men this afternoon, so I whipped up some blood bikkies for you, John dear. Make sure to share them. Your Sherlock looks like he needs fattening up. So thin, dear.”

 

She gave Sherlock’s chest two distinct pats before heading back towards the stairs.   
  
“There’s only one bedroom,” John intoned, looking softer now, out of the jacket. Steel still ran through his voice. “But it’s quite large, and I’ve been assured by your… brother that an additional coffin will be delivered shortly. If you need rest for now, you can use mine. Through there.”   
  


“I don’t need a coffin,” Sherlock scoffed, appalled that a modern vampire would still use such a contraption. It wasn’t necessary. So he’d fallen asleep with a hand in a beam of light or two. No harm done.   
  
John’s thick brows rose. Sherlock cleared his throat, looking around. Sleeping in another’s coffin (or bed). Their scent - John’s scent.

 

“I’ll be fine on the sofa.”    
  
Sherlock looked like a wraith, thin and dirty. He still had blood across his chin from his last binge. His stomach still felt achingly empty. Whatever things he might have had were gone. Were they? Mycroft had intervened before, but the older vampire had grown tired of his antics.

 

“It’s all fine,” Sherlock repeated.

 

John came to stand just before Sherlock, dark blue eyes heavy with disapproval.

 

“I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Mr. Holmes,” John spoke softly, but firmly. He was a man who was heard and obeyed. Who brooked no argument. “For the present time, I am your Guardian. I am responsible not only for your health and well-being, but your adjustment in society. While you are under my care, this means you will eat, sleep, and behave in a manner fitting to your recovery.”

 

What Sherlock would come to learn is beneath the military jacket, beneath the wooly jumper, the plaid soft flannel shirt, the under tee, layers and layers - lay a web of silver-scarring. John Watson had been turned in the first Afghan War. He’d nearly died, several times, being returned to England. He’d been a doctor. Over time, he’d had to re-enter medical school. Learn the advancements in medical science, become a doctor all over again.   
  


Unlike most vampires, he’d been reborn with a sedate blood lust. He could handle gruesome surgeries, war wounds, and so very much blood without a twitch. He’d flown under the radar, different names, different cities. Until vampires became known, and he reclaimed his identity. The military was only too happy to let individuals with enhanced senses, extra strength, long memories and a bloodlust join up.

 

So he re-enlisted. Captain John H. Watson, doctor, soldier, returned to war. Again and again. Until the enemy began using weapons for his kind. Now he sported silver poisoned shrapnel embedded in his shoulder and leg. He was permanently weakened, blood-hunger harsher than the day he was remade.

 

And now babysitter to a rockstar-Lestat wannabe with decades to his hundreds.   
  
He’d been invalided back home to London, but a soldier never truly left her Majesty’s army.

 

“You’re hungry.”   
  
Sherlock’s pupils grew, nose flaring as he inhaled the healthy vampire in front of him.

 

He’d been out of control when he was first reborn. After the death of two human handlers, he’d fed from fellow vampires. His appetite now warped to crave his kin. Bottled supplements tasted of ash. John, though, smelled oddly of sunlight, antiseptic, and…

 

“Tea?”

 

“What?” Sherlock exhaled the word, shivering as John’s presence pulled away, going into the kitchen.    
  
“I know not everyone enjoys ‘human’ foods, but I still enjoy a cuppa or a beer on occasion,” John replied, busying himself with the kettle.

 

Sherlock was still tasting the scent of John on his tongue, eyes fluttering as data ticked through his mind. He needed to be rid of this Guardian - fast.

 

***

 

Sherlock had learned that John had a job in a cross-species clinic. He worked evenings and nights. Sherlock, whose sleep was still disturbed from his last binge and withdrawal. So he’d taken to sleeping during John’s shifts in the roomy plush coffin. It was a simple thing, black, military issue, but an officer’s upgraded padding.

The entire thing was infused with the scent of gunpowder and black tea. He buried his nose in the pillow, musing over the handful of boxes that had been delivered. They had contained his things - some things - from his last flat. Clothing, a few books and journals, pictures, his mobile phone. 

 

No drugs, no money, no experiments. Likely all disposed of by faceless humans who did his brother’s bidding. 

 

Mycroft!

 

Sherlock growled to himself, self-soothing with his flatmate’s scent. He’d finished off a bottle of JUUZ, one of the newer supplements on the market (and less repulsive ones), but it still sat in his stomach like a rock. 

 

And he was still hungry. 

 

The lid rose, letting in the soft warm light John left on in the bedroom.

 

“Budge over,” the tired doctor said.

 

Sherlock didn’t have a second to think before the near-naked body of John Watson was climbing into the coffin beside him. He was jostled as John shifted and sighed, tucking the lanky detective around until John could lay more or less on his back with Sherlock pillowed on his scarred shoulder, just showing out from beneath his undershirt.

 

“I’ll just- I’ll-”

 

Sherlock continued to make aborted movements to escape the enclosed space.

 

“No, be still,” John shushed. “No. You’re barely sleeping as it is. I’m coming off a twelve hour shift, and we can both fit. Stop squirming.”

 

Sherlock froze as John’s words vibrated through him. The order, the command. Another thing hollywood failed was, but John’s firm voice made him want to test otherwise. He shivered despite the gentle heat.

 

John was cooler than human skin, but not “cold like marble” or ...like a cadaver. Vampires were human, ish. They weren’t dead, either. 

 

Sherlock inhaled.

 

“You had a bleeder in the clinic?” he questioned, nose tilting up towards John’s ear. 

  
Inside the padded crypt, they were in their own little world.

 

“Eight year old, cut on a rusty pipe,” John agreed.

 

“Tetanus, bad for the appetite.”   
  


“Not much of a mouthful on one that little either,” John teased back.

 

They’d grown in the handful of days together, finding common ground in black humor.

 

Sherlock wet his lips, catching a taste of John’s skin.

 

The older vampire inhaled sharply.

 

Sherlock felt the seconds tick, tick, tick. Either John would kick him out, ruining the little bubble of peace they’d created, or he’d ignore it.

 

“You’ve got one on you, though,” John settled on, surprising Sherlock. Fingers carded through Sherlock’s dark curls. “I’ve read your file, you know.”

 

Oh.

 

Right.

 

The Agency.

 

“Then you know those supplement bottles aren’t going to cure me of whatever Mycroft and the agency see as my ‘addiction’.”

 

More deliberately this time, Sherlock inhaled at John’s throat. He wouldn’t bite him. It would be far too messy. ...Wouldn't it?

 

“I have silver running through my veins, Sherlock,” John replied, warning in his tone.

 

“It hasn’t killed you yet,” the detective rumbled, grazing his teeth along a corded tendon. John’s head tilted back, exposing himself to Sherlock’s curious mouth and nose. Despite the seemingly submissive position, Sherlock didn’t believe for one second that he was in a position of power. “I’m hungry.”

 

Quiet puffs of breath escape both of their mouths. Sherlock could see just a glint of fang in the near-total darkness. He mouthed a wet kiss along John’s throat, making the other man moan heatedly. Fingers tightened in Sherlock’s curls, just shy of painful.

 

Oh yes, this could be good.

 

Very good. 

 

Sherlock snapped forward sinking his teeth into John's throat. The tussle that broke out pushes the coffin lid askew, lighting the view of thick red blood. Silver poisoned blood tingled like a hot pepper along Sherlock's lips and throat.

 

John flipped them, pinning Sherlock and crushing blood stained mouths together. 

 

It certainly wasn't how the detective expected his Guardianship to end up, but as John's strong calluses hands pulled aside his pyjamas, he grinned a fanged smile. 


End file.
